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Ever since the creation of my Good Old Fashioned Punch & Judy Show seven years ago, not a summer has gone by when someone somewhere has not wanted it. This summer looked for a while to be a dry season, but suddenly! Black Creek Pioneer Village! They hired me for three performances for their new Fall Fair! Amelia Blaine served as my barker and bottler, and a good time was had by all ...
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Went into the studio today to perform my lines as Mr. Beaver for a new PBS science/edutainment series, ELINOR WONDERS WHY, coming soon. I'd never recorded a cartoon quite like this before. Usually it's just you, in a booth, a microphone hanging in front of your face and your lines spread out on a music stand. Everyone is recorded separately and they mix it all together in post. But today we did "ensemble recording" where the entire cast was in the room and we all recorded our lines together. Like a performance. I think they do that for the energy and cast chemistry it generates. That, and it's likely a lot easier for the kids on the show, who now have someone they can actually respond to in real time. These youngsters are good. Their characters are kids - so they just have to stand and deliver and sound exactly like themselves. The trick is getting the energy, urgency, drama, and clarity into each line, and that's where the voice director sometimes pipes up and guides them as needed. I overheard one of them -- the boy, around 7 years old -- humming a tune from Star Wars, and so he and I bonded instantly by reciting as many of the themes as we could. It was a very fun day on a very friendly set for what is certain to be a very charming new series. They're still writing it, and they say it's likely Mr. Beaver will return. I hope so ... I need to come up with some more obscure Star Wars tunes to challenge my young cast-mate!  Well well well ... several weeks after I submitted an audition (I'd actually forgotten all about) I just got news today that I've landed the role of "Mr. Beaver" in a new animated science show coming this fall on PBS. "Elinor Wonders Why".
Read all about it here: “It’s like a cabaret, a show & tell, an evening of everything we learned this semester.” That was the plan for the final Humber presentation in April, and it came off very well. Eileen Smith liked our show so much she immediately invited us to appear at her new mini-fest in Stratford - PuppetWorks, an off-shoot of her long-established SpringWorks. We would perform four times across the weekend of July 12, 13, 14. I chose the week leading up to our departure for Stratford as the week that we would work towards recreating the show. Nearly three months had passed since we’d done it at Humber. I would provide the script and direct the piece. Of necessity we had to expand some bits, and re-think others. Instead of the weird creatures and experimental puppets we used at Humber, I had to re-cast the final portion of our show from my personal collection of stuffed animals. I’m quite proud of what we came up with. As promised, it was extremely similar to the original 30-minute presentation that impressed Eileen. We were given a small, raised platform inside a big white tent that was set up in the middle of Market Square in downtown Stratford. As before, the show began with our village of little spongy dudes running and climbing and hopping around doing silly things while the audience was coming in. We invented new antics, too, spongies climbing the sides of the tent, dancing on people’s knees, even venturing outside to wave at passersby. At showtime I as narrator took the stage and introduced the show. We re-named it Puppet School, and we took that title literally by offering the audience all of my usual lessons, with the puppets demonstrating things step by step as we went along. For that, we said goodbye to the little spongy dudes by having them leap off the back of the table one by one like cascading dominoes, to be replaced one by one by our fleet of colourful cloth neutrals. Up and down the line these cloth neutrals ran through the gamut of basic movements, gestures, and emotions. Then they demonstrated simple interactions like nodding to one another and shaking hands. Perhaps my favourite of the new inventions using these puppets were the quick scenes they performed together. And I do mean quick. One or two lines at the most. For the first one, the puppets clustered all together at one end of the table, while three, at the opposite end, huddled up and stirred an invisible cauldron, chanting “bubble bubble toil and trouble!!”. Then they switched into a new picture, with puppets clustered up to watch a quick two-puppet scene, one character towering over another - “Join me and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son!” “I’ll never join you!!” Switch! Another scene. Switch! Another. And switch, another. These were fast-paced and delightful, and I loved the way the puppeteers brought each moment to life. We demonstrated “puppet breath” by having the puppets heave a sigh together, and then “puppet gravity” by making the puppets look at the table they were standing on and suddenly floating as if weightless in space. For the more esoteric portion of the show, (what we called “The Island Story” back in April), we swapped out the production students’ array of spiders, fuzzy monsters, and articulated walking puppets, and used instead ordinary toys and stuffies: a rabbit, a platypus, two Raggedy Anns, a monkey. While the horse and his boy were the same as before -- the white blank puppets from class -- the furry new menagerie added cuteness, warmth, and charm, and again the puppeteers excelled as they made the animals appear one by one to populate the “island”. Then came our musical grand finale with the puppets all dancing together to a rousing finish. The end. On the last day, festival organizer Wendy McNaughton surprised us all with discount tickets to Little Shop of Horrors. Then we were back on the shuttle, back to home. What a pleasure to work with these fine theatre-makers. I'm going to the Wednesday July 10th, 2:30 show. Join me, won't you?  My students and I will be presenting a new iteration of our Humber Puppet Potpourris, now called PUPPET SCHOOL, at SpringWorks' new mini fest, PuppetWorks, in Stratford, July 12, 13, and 14, 2019. Details below:
Wrapped up another semester of puppetry instruction at Humber College, and what a smashing good time it was! We always end the year with a public presentation. This year, we tried something new.
We had a full house that included Ann and David Powell, Robyn Polffus, Eileen Smith, and Frank Meschkuliet, who kindly gave me a cup of Tim Horton’s coffee to keep me going. (Shawna Reiter and I started this day -- as did the students -- first thing in the morning and we didn’t wrap until 10pm.) We also had a very full stage. Fourteen students is a lot, but once they donned their “puppeteer blacks” and placed their hands on the puppets, they were an impressive army of manipulators who managed to disappear and allow their puppets to take the focus. It was Shawna’s idea to begin the evening with “a bunch of those little spongy dudes running around all over the place” to serve as whimsical eye-candy: goofy little androgynous characters climbing, sliding, jumping and generally being elflike and silly all over the room while people trickled in and found their seats. When the evening officially began I took the stage to greet the audience, while all over the room the little spongy antics continued. All part of the plan … “Good evening and welcome to our final puppetry presentation. We’re calling this a ‘potpourris’ - a sampling of the many things we’ve been working on this semester. Some of the puppets you’ll see are the ordinary classroom puppets that we use for exercises. Some have been found and repurposed. And some have been specially designed and built by Shawna’s production students. And sooooo …. let us begin!” My little spongy puppets were still scattered around the room, playing and leaping and climbing … “One of the first things we learn when we study animation theory and then apply it to the practice of live animation, is that it’s not quite so important how a puppet moves, but rather, just as important how a puppet stops.” Here, just as rehearsed, all of the spongies en mass gave a collective “Hmmmm?” and stopped, frozen in a listening pose to wait for what I would say next. I could hear that rivet of silence that I love so much: the one that tells me that yes, we have them. And so I turned and looked at my waiting characters and said “exactly!” - and there we had it: the first chuckle of the night, and a resounding success from there on. “We’ve also learned that we can direct the audience’s eye …” Here I stepped out of the way and let the puppets take over. We’d spent a lot of time rehearsing this sequence, and I was very pleased with the results. This was my “ping-pong” theory come to vivid life. All of the spongy puppets began to assemble from the far corners of the room, but they marked their journeys in increments and they did so One. At. A. Time. First, a little fellow hopped over to a group of puppeteers who were sitting near our table surface. He stopped. Then, from the other side of the stage, another little guy approached a similar cluster of bodies. He stopped. Then the first one, climbing up to the top of someone’s head. Stop. Back to the second one again, hopping across a terrain of heads. Stop. Back to the next guy. And so on. By the time we’d gone back and forth and finished, all of the puppets had made their journeys to our table and landed there with a triumphant “tada!” I wish I’d thought to tape the audience from my vantage point, because, just as we always hope, their heads most certainly must have pinged and ponged from character to character, like an audience watching tennis. “Very good, but you are all so small. Maybe the people in the back can’t see. Could we scale this operation up a little bit please?” Here the spongy guys jumped off the table, one by one like dominoes, except for the very last one, who was distracted. Another character had to come up and pull him down. (This was the beginning of our running gag featuring “the puppet who’s always last.”) Then, one by one, like dominoes, my colourful ball-and-shirt cloth neutrals leapt into view, ready for action. Except for the last one, who climbed up last, struggling. “Very good. Welcome to our stage. Now, puppets express themselves physically using their bodies. It has to be physical or else we won’t see it. Physical therefore visible. And a lot of this expression actually happens when they use their heads, because that’s where their brains are, and their eyes. So we learn something called Language of the Head don’t we?” The puppets all nodded their heads, yes. “And now we know everything we need to know about puppetry, right?” The puppets all shook their heads, no. “Well, we know a little bit more than we did before.” Here the puppets sort of shrugged, tilting their heads in that “maybe so” move that I teach. “For example, we know that puppets can use their bodies to express different emotions. Puppets can be …” … and here we went down the line one by one and had the puppets strike the perfect pose … “… hungry, sad, confused, surprised, worried, scared …” Again, our last puppet on the end wasn’t paying attention and had to be nudged by the puppet standing next to him. “… and absent-minded.” Another laugh. Our running gag is working! “We also know that puppets can interact with each other.” Here the puppets traded different interactions: nods, bows, hugs, hand-shakes … except for the one on the end, who had to be nudged again. “Now, we’d like to show you an extended example of live animation, something that includes everything we’ve learned. You’ll see stops, you’ll see language of the head and interactions, and you’ll also see some fully realized animation as one, sometimes two, and sometimes three manipulators team up on a single character. Here, then, is a little bit of everything …” What we called “The Island Story” in class as we were cooking it up was a totally non-verbal and completely esoteric piece of puppet theatre that, as my friend Frank said afterward “made no sense, but it didn’t matter.” That was fine by us. It was only loosely a story. What it really was, was a showcase for puppets and puppeteers. The only hint that we were on an island came from an ambient soundscape added at the last minute. It was lovely, and created an exotic atmosphere just as intended. The story began with blue waves (one of my old sheets from home) lapping against the floor, and the rising of an ethereal, floating ocean goddess (one of the production student’s creations) who was ushering the waves. When at last the waves retreated, there was a boy (my unfinished homemade bun-raku dummy) who now lay, motionless and manipulator-less on the floor. One by one the denizens of the island came to check out this lifeless form. A horse (my white cardboard Shaw prototype), two little children with cute shuffling dresses (more of the production student’s work), and then their dad (a production student creation with a beautiful head and live arms inside of a man’s shirt). This character emerged from behind our playing table, approached the boy, knelt, regarded him, lifted him gently from the floor, and placed him upon the table. The boy then awoke, and stood up, in a beautiful display of full animation as three puppeteers teamed up to create realistic human motion: wake, roll over, stand up, feel woozy, look about, kneel down to look over the edge of the table. A friendly dog (one of my stuffies from home) came bounding in. The dog and the boy cuddled. The horse returned, which made the boy nervous at first, but then they bonded and the horse invited the boy to ride him. Here again was some lovely manipulation from the team - a human mounting a horse, acutely observed and performed with great detail. When the horse rose up and the boy was astride him, the illusion was remarkable, considering the horse is just cardboard, only a head, with a mop for a mane, and the boy just a lump of white clay with no eyes. The horse and his boy went for a gallop around the table to (what we presumed to be) a new area of this weird island, and here’s where our menagerie of strange island denizens emerged. Most of these puppets came courtesy of Shawna’s production students: a big yellow monster, a giant scuttling spider, my multi-coloured beanie-bear, an opera singer with a giant mouth and jaunty hat, and a sassy cat. There was also a porcupine whose quills were made of syringes. Then, for no logical reason (but perfect for esoteric reasons) three of my mask puppets rose up from their puddles of fabric on the floor. (They’d been resting there in plain sight all this time.) They acknowledged each other, found a ukulele, examined it, and placed it on the table. Then they dissolved into the floor again as, one by one, the cloth neutrals appeared on our playing table, found the uke, and passed it along from each to each to each. The puppet at the very end of this line used the uke to bonk another puppet on the head. (A nice laugh.) None of these characters knew what to do with this thing. They hopped down again. And then, tada! Our absent-minded puppet who was always distracted and struggling, picked it up and strummed it, leading into a musical jamboree that was the grand finale of the night: a village of colourful puppets dancing. We cued music for this sequence: three songs pre-selected by the students: I Need A Hero, I Believe in Miracles, and Hooked on a Feeling. The centre song accompanied a nicely choreographed “pole dance” by one of my cloth neutrals, performed by two students who had obviously spent a lot of time on it. Another student had the brilliantly comical idea of holding up a mirror ball during that pole dance! The final portion of the night was a Show & Tell hosted by Shawna. A highlight of this sequence was a rapport that developed between the student who designed the opera singer, and the puppeteer who offered to help demonstrate it. These two reacted to each other, responded, and the puppet showed nuance that blew my mind. Everyone in attendance was extremely complimentary. “It’s a show!” said Frank. “This is a good program now!” said Ann Powell. “We could have this at Stratford this summer!” said Eileen Smith. Remounting the piece will depend on who’s available and how much time we’ll have to re-polish, but I’d love to do a version of this Puppet Potpourris for Eileen’s PuppetWorks in Stratford, and for the Powell’s Fresh Ideas later this spring. Actress Mary Berg and I shot our commercial for Dawn liquid detergent today, in a kitchen near High Park. Mary also shot a Starbucks commercial this week, and I just learned that this Dawn spot and the Starbucks ad are both "tied in" to her upcoming cooking show. Here we are, on set:  I'm so proud -- absolutely bursting at the seams with joy, actually -- to share that Miss Persona was nominated for 2 Emmy Awards’s today: for Outstanding Preschool Children’s Series, and the incredible Kimberly Persona herself for Outstanding Performer in a Children’s, Family Viewing or Special Class Program!  Here's an audition story with a twist ending.
Quite some time ago an advertising executive invited me to submit a video audition for a Dawn Dish Detergent commercial. In the ad, a helpful bottle of Dawn comes to life, walks around, offers its services, and dances a jig along with the theme from Lavern & Shirley. Okay, so me and no doubt several other Toronto puppeteers made self-tapes and sent them in. I chose to simply dance to the theme song, nice and simple. We wait, we wait, we wait. Some of us even asked each other "Did you ever hear back from that Dawn thing?" "Nope, never did. You?" "Nope." "Hmmmm .... I wonder who got it." Fast-forward a couple of months, and, by coincidence, my agent sends me out to audition for a commercial for Dawn - not as a puppeteer, mind you, but as a regular human actor. (I do that sometimes.) For this, it's for the part of a stuffy butler who's holding a bottle of Dawn on a silver platter, standing by, ready to serve. At my audition -- in person, this time -- I deliver my one scripted line "Yes, of course Miss Mary" and I'm just on my way out the door when I stop and ask: "By the way, is this part of the same campaign where there's a bottle of Dawn that comes to life and dances around?" "Um ... we were going to do that, but we've changed the entire scheme to this butler guy. How would you even know about that?" "Because I'm one of the puppeteers who submitted a video for that!" "Oh," they said. "Well, we're not doing that one anymore." Right then. I could see them all jotting down notes as I walked out. Well, by golly, I got the call last night: I am to play the Dawn butler. I'm being fitted for a deluxe tuxedo on Monday and we shoot next week! |
